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do we need documentation in the age of AI? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 days ago by bruh@thelemmy.club to c/programming@programming.dev
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recently I gave AI a task to configure a software and the software didn't have any docs of how it works only the source code. the agent went through all the files and generated a summary of how it works and why it's not working for my particular scenario and suggested edits to my docker-compose.yml file. I couldn't believe it since the bug was very hard to find and it used headless firefox to find why it wasn't working.

made me realize do we still need documentation of how a software work when a AI can easily explain it?

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[-] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

There’s not really any such thing as a one off web page.

Of course there is. What an absurd thing to say. A very obvious example is event websites, e.g. for weddings.

I’m calling bullshit on that

Maybe it depends on the language but I've recently vibe coded two tools in Rust and I've skimmed the code and it's perfectly good Rust. I would accept it in a PR - even if I was being as picky as I'd really like to be in reviews. I don't think that would have been the case 3 months ago though.

this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
-93 points (4.0% liked)

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